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jp's Boogie (DS)

[January 19, 2011 05:10:17 PM]

Hmm... that was more interesting than I thought while at the same time slightly underwhelming. The DS has a few interesting rhythm/actions games (Elite Beat Agents and Rhythm Heaven the most notable). So, I was curious about what innovations/changes Boogie brought to the table. I was a little disappointed, you mostly have to swipe the stylus in a set direction (matched to a beat, or cue).

What is different, and perhaps worthy of mention is that Boogie has "mini-games" of sorts. During a regular song, there are a few (3-4) "interruptions" of the regular gameplay in which you have to play a mini-game (the song still plays). I got the sense that the mini-games were sort of random and dependent on the actual song. Anyways, the mini-games mix it up a little and, curiously, have no effect on your score (though you can earn special medals if you really well at all of them during a particular song). These include things such as tapping an area of the screen when it lights up (e.g the floor, a tambourine) or swiping in certain patterns, and even microphone noise-bursts.

The game has a campaign mode in which you pick a character and then...dance away. The story didn't really make much sense to me and I had a hard time understanding when I was making campaign progress since many of the "important" dance-offs seemed to happen in random locations that I had to make sure I visited every now and then. In other words, if I chose to always dance in the same place, I might never have advanced in the story mode (sometimes you had to go back to previously unlocked locations...). So, I played a complete campaign with one character... here's what jumped out:

1. Freestyle mode (do whatever you want, to the beat, just make sure you never do two identical moves in a row) is the way to go for high scores. In fact, it's almost too easy! Once I figured this out I never used the other modes since they have less moves/unit of time than freestyling...so the high scores are capped comparatively with freestyle possibilities.

2. There's a mode where you have to do the right swipe as it moves underneath a marker (think DDR interface, but one move at a time and moving from right to left). Sometimes it worked oddly in that with one swipe I was able to get TWO "objective moves" for the price of one. (they change color when you've done them). I'm not sure if this was a bug...but it was weird and could also screw with your timing..

3. The songs were clearly not by their original artists. This was very noticeable on some tracks..however it wasn't a bad thing in and of itself. What I DID find bad was that the original artists weren't acknowledged anywhere in the game (other than the credits!). I always thought it was cool how Guitar Hero (1 at least) had a short blurb for each song indicating who the original artist was. So, you'd play "SongX as made famous by Artist Y". I wish they had done that here...

Once I finished the campaign... I started up with another character to see if there were any major differences from the start. For all of 1 song, I was convinced that each dancer had his/her own tracklist! (wow!)....but then I went back and realized that the songs were all the same...I had just forgotten them. Different characters do have different clothing options (including those that unlock).

At this stage I can't be bothered to go back and play another character all the way to the end just in case there's a hidden bonus song or something...